How we work - Our method

All the members of Futuresco Games work in their own home, we are not a company (by the moment ;) ) but a group of creative friends who would like to express our ideas through the videogames world.

We start a project with an idea, any member of us can have a good idea, an argument, a story to start working on it. Once we have this idea we try to research around it to get the more information as posible, reading, visiting a village, searching sites related on the internet, asking specialists, sending e-mails to friends etc. We have to feel this idea to create a videogame around it.

We organize periodical meetings of brainstormings to talk about the argument, the atmosphere of the game, the music, the sprites and any detail we want to discuss about. Brainstorming is a technique that has helped us a lot to mature ideas and feelings to one another. Raúl write the design document in which all the ideas are shown.

This is the working corner of Francisco. He likes being surrounded by some classic videogames jewells. They inspire his imagination and creativity.

Defining the visual style of the videogame

Pedro and Quim are responsibles for the graphical style and animation of the videogame. They use to suggest to the rest of the team some posible styles according to the initial meetings in which we deal what feelings and atmosphere we want to transmit.

They also design all the drawings and images of the covers, website decoration, marketing campaigns etc.

Pedro is a prolific self-taught artist, all his artwork is original and innovative with a great dose of imagination. He starts working directly on his computer with several software tools such as Zbrush, Cinema 4D, Photoshop etc. for character modeling, animation and drawings of characters and environments.

Designing sprites and animate them

Pedro, based on the design document, draws the initial approach to the videogame sprites (characters, platforms, symbols...). Pedro gives the sprites to Quim, separated into joints, in png image format.

At this moment Quim starts his animation work. Quim vectorize the images using Adobe Flash and then he cleans up the image from the remainings that this process generates.

Once the images are prepared, Quim starts the animation process work. He generates frame after frame calculing time delay of movements.

Finally Quim exports all the animation frames into png image format and imports them into GameMaker, there, Quim smooths the lines and retouch the image pixels.

Designing sprites

Designing the adventure

Raúl is the game designer, he is in charge of define the diferents screens, stages, levels, difficulties, challenges... to get the most adictive and gameplayed videogame.

He gets inspiration from literature, music, dreams, his fantasy and sometimes even from classic videogames he played when he was a child. All these ideas can appear at any moment and Raúl write them down in a prioritized tasks list.

In order to transform these ideas into a videogame we use GameMaker framework. First of all he makes a proof of concept in GameMaker and tests that this new feature works right, then, he refines it until it gets an excellent result.

Programming and Integration

Videogame programming is done by Raúl, he programs all the characters movements, scenarios, game events and gameplay. In the future we would like to include more programmers into the team.

Another important task is the integration of all the graphical and musical elements into the videogame. It requires a huge coordination effort done remotely via communication tools such as Skype, Gmail etc. He wastes a lot of time deciding the best way to take for each multimedia component, refining them constantly with the artists until it become an excellent result. As a result of these chattings new design ideas appears and Raúl always note them to take them into account for the next refining phase.

This is Raúl´s desktop, where all their fantasy worlds come true

Music and sound effects

Julio is responsible for the music and sound effects of our videogames.

Julio document himself in each project to feel the essense and feelings of the story and try to compose the kind of music that share these sensations to the players.

The first step is the selection of musical instruments and the music style (for instance, Nagual has Mayan music style mixed with occidentals ones). Then the development phase starts by componing melodies and rithms for the different themes of the videogame.

He uses to include into the soundtrack an orchestal version of the videogame main theme. It is normally used for the making of teasers and video presentations.

The final result is a soundtrack that has about twelve themes per videogame approximately.

According to the design document, Julio designs the sound effects of the videogame which appears in each game event such as characters actions por instance.

Our games

Drones!

"Nagual, The Mystical Path" DEMO

Coco returns

Coco - Amateur Game

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